Surgery Details

Brandon dressed for surgery.

One of the hard parts about getting a baby ready for surgery is that he can’t eat for several hours before the surgery. They gave us a complete schedule. His last solid feeding was the night before. His last feeding of breast milk was early in the morning and his last bit of clear liquids came about three hours before the surgery was scheduled.

Everything didn’t go super smooth. We made it to the hospital right on time. We filled out paperwork and dressed Brandon for surgery. It was going great until the nurse came in and told us that there had been an emergency surgery and that we had to wait another three hours. Brandon was able to drink some apple juice at that point but he’s not fond of drinking out of a cup so he got VERY little.

The funny thing is that Brandon is very outspoken when he gets hungry so I anticipated trouble but he was great! We walked around the hospital most of the time to keep him distracted and he was pretty happy the whole time. I was amazed.

We had been told that he had two hernias but when the surgeon looked at Brandon he felt like only the left side needed to be repaired. Afterward he said it was a very complicated surgery. Because of his former surgeries he had a ton of scar tissue. The doctor said it was bad enough that he couldn’t tell what was what. He told us that when this happens they need to use “another technique” but he also said that it went really well and everything was good.

As I mentioned, when Brandon woke up he was mad. One of the nurses said that he was one of the loudest babies she has ever heard. He has learned to scream lately and he can certainly make some noise. We he is calm and happy it’s hard to imagine but he and Katelyn can to a great job of disrupting church every week. Even the next morning Brandon was pretty drowsy when we first went back to see him but he was pretty calm. He was able to begin nursing right away and he was acting pretty normal within a couple of hours. He was however very calm and he just wanted to snuggle with his mom. Both Brandon and Katelyn have a slight fever but they are doing well and I assume the fevers have nothing to do with the surgery.

We had been told that the goal was to keep Brandon less than 24 hours. Based on what we heard we were expecting it to be closer to 23 hours but when Brandon was doing so well in the morning they sent us home pretty early.

We got a chance to stay at the Ronald McDonald house (Katelyn, Blake, Derek and I), or as the boys call it, the Old McDonald house. In addition to a very inexpensive place to stay it’s a great place. They have a huge kitchen. They have a bunch of free food that is donated by various people groups and restaurants. And a different group comes in each evening and cooks dinner for everyone. In addition they have stuff like free passes to the zoo and the children’s museum. The boys wanted to stay longer than one night. However, we did get a chance to hit the zoo for a couple of hours so they had a lot of fun. As great as it was, I hope we don’t ever go back.

This is the wagon we used to pull Brandon around the hospital.

Katelyn didn't want to stay in the wagon but luckily Amy moves fast.

Brandon in the recovery room.

Pictures from the zoo. (My grandfather always pointed out that those cougar statues were sculpted by a relative - Unle Avard)

The funny part about this picture is that Derek was actually mad at me for finishing his ice cream cone. He was grumpy so when I told them to look mad he didn't want to do what I said and he smiled, Blake looked mad liked I asked. They should be actors because they both look convincing.